live in the moment, in case it's your last
Tessa Nilsson is struggling. She had been a successful podcaster. Her true crime podcast The Witching Hour, about Sweden’s most notorious cases, was wildly popular. She just bought an apartment. She had a girlfriend. And it all fell apart because of one bad choice. Now she’s unemployed, possibly getting sued, and about to be kicked out of her apartment. So of course, she has to go on a four-day bachelorette party to a private island with a luxury yoga resort. In fact, she wouldn’t go at all, except for one reason. The private island in the archipelago near Stockholm sounds a lot like Isle Blind.
Isle Blind is a place Tessa had been wanting to visit. There is a cold case about four women who had gone missing ten years ago. The police had said that they had clearly had too much to drink and then tried to boat back home. None of the women arrived though. It was thought they had fallen overboard and died in the water. But Tessa didn’t believe that story. She thought that the women had been to Isle Blind, and something had happened on the island. It was a private island, owned by the parents of one of the women who had gone missing. And now Tessa has a chance to go to this private island and investigate what might have happened ten years ago, and with her job situation so dire, she could use a breakout podcast, and this could get her there.
But first, she has to endure four days of bachelorette fun, sunrise yoga, mindfulness, and vegan food. And she has to forfeit her phone, tablet, and laptop, as there is no wi-fi on the island. It’s bride-to-be Anneliese, maid of honor Mikaela, Caroline, photographer Natalie, and Tessa’s sister Lena at Baltic Vinyasa, celebrating their years of friendship and the great things that are to come for them.
The resort isn’t officially open yet, so owner Irene and chef Adam are the only staff there for the weekend. The women found out about the place because Lena and Irene were friends. Irene agreed to let them come for the weekend in exchange for good social media chatter, and since the women come with their own photographer, they are certain that they will get plenty of beautiful photos to share. Tessa is happy to be there with her friends, but she is also itching to explore the island, see if she can find anything that could indicate if she really was on Isle Blind, if she really was at the location of four murders. But mostly. she wants to get close to Irene, because it was her younger sister Matilda who was one of the four women Tessa thinks was murdered on this very island.
As the festivities begin and the wine gest poured, Tessa tries to join in and not make it obvious she’s investigating. But as the days go by, there are strange things happening. The small boat that’s kept on the island is see loose out on the water. Caroline has to leave suddenly, leaving just a note. And Tessa finds a bone on the beach that she thinks looks like part of a spine. Irene assures her that’s it from a deer, but Tessa is unsettled. She came to the island thinking that it was the place where four women lost their lives. But what it’s more than just four? How can she be certain that they’ll be safe on an island with such a reputation?
The Bachelorette Party is a chilling story of intrigue and danger that escalates slowly. Author Camilla Sten describes the island and the women with beautiful prose that underlines the ugly crimes that run through this story. It’s told in alternating timelines, mostly in the present but sometimes dipping back ten years, so readers get the whole picture of both get-togethers on Isle Blind and find out what happened to each woman involved.
I listened to The Bachelorette Party on audio, narrated by Laura Jennings. I thought she did a lovely job telling this story, but there were times I struggled to figure out which timeline we were in. I thought that this was a story that would benefit from two narrators, one telling the story of the present day bachelorette party and the other telling the story of ten years ago, to help listeners keep the stories separate. But Sten’s writing is so thorough, so detailed, that having just one voice narrate the entire story is still enjoyable. It just took me a little more work to keep the stories straight.
For a fairly horrific crime story, The Bachelorette Party is beautifully told. I would almost call it horror, but with sophistication. It’s not dark like Nordic noir, but there is a darkness to the perpetrators of these crimes that can’t be denied. This has an honesty about human nature, an inevitability that comes from the jealousy, the rage, the insecurity that we all have. Some characters use that as a fire to survive while others use it to burn down everything they care about. I found this story both disturbing and hopeful, and I look forward to more of Sten’s writing, as she strips away human pretense and shows us with all our flaws and potentials.
Egalleys for The Bachelorette Party were provided by Minotaur Books, and a copy of the audio book was provided by Macmillan Audio, both through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.
